Navigating belonging: mobilities of Japanese artists in (post) COVID-19 Berlin

Abstract

This article explores the post-migration mobilities of Japanese migrant artists in Berlin to contribute to scholarship on creative mobility. By focusing on non-Western artists, we add a more nuanced understanding of the migration-mobility nexus to this scholarship. Our findings reveal that even ‘privileged’ migrants from the Global North, who are typically seen as benefiting from mobility, face forms of social and economic precarity in their everyday lives. The study examines the tension between mobility capital, which frames mobility as an opportunity for enrichment, and mobility risk, where movement entails significant vulnerabilities. Based on ethnographic research, including interviews with 32 Japanese migrant artists in Berlin, we investigate how Japanese artists in Berlin negotiate feelings of belonging through mobilities to balance their professional and personal lives, lives that were further complicated through the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue that mobilities are not only a means to achieve career goals, but also to navigate multiple belongings and to cope with mobility induced risks and vulnerabilities in migrant artists’ lives. Overall, this research expands current understandings of mobility by analyzing how precarity and belonging intersect for non-Western migrants in Europe.